Another SUPER LIMITED cd-r from the Jyrk Collective (run by the guys in the Yellow Swans) who also just recently released the amazing (and also quite limited) Grey Daturas / Yellow Swans collaboration found elsewhere on this list. Unlike the GD / YS collaboration, this is a good old fashioned split, with each band offering up twenty minutes or so of their particular brand of skree. The Yellow Swans deliver a practically swoonsome drone, haunting and mysterious, with simple plodding percussion, occasional elctronic filigree and moody Eastern sounding guitar melodies. So nice. The Skaters take the noisier road, with a clangy clattery blown out soundscpae of distorted drones, buzzy fuzzy electronic whir and heavily affected disembodied vocalisations. Thickly layered and weirdly otherworldly.
And again, just to drive that point home, THIS IS VERY LIMITED. By the time you read this review, this cd-r will already be out of print. So if you want one act fast!
This is one of those records where we loove looove love the cover and picture disc artwork... a lot more than the recording. SSMWWT are damaged sounding. So So so distorted guitar, drums and vocals -- vocals that conjure a Yeah Yeah Yeahs' Karen O on speedballs, or dying cats screaming for their lives as they're put through a meat grinder. (No animals were harmed in this review.)
In its wall of fuzzed-out screaming distortion, the album's 11 quick tracks are either uppers or downers -- slow hungover sludge or hyper speedy meth timing. You might not be able to deal with this. If you can deal with it, you are/were probably into Wolf Eyes, Lightning Bolt, Six Finger Satellite and the like. But just look at that pretty kitty picture disc. Mmmmm...
Housed in a nice pink cover-sleeve, this album's floating guitar psych is the work of another relatively new Japanese underground psych outfit that we first got turned on to via the PSF label's recent, excellent Tokyo Flashback 5 compilation! In our review of that comp, we described them/their track thusly: "bleak folk duo, very lovely, eventually overcome by space-out distortion". And that same assessment applies likewise to this self-titled debut disc of theirs, except that here they're a trio, with the core pairing of Pirako and Kageo (both guitar/vocals) joined by drummer Tail. 69 minutes, five tracks, delicate, dreamy and drifting. With gentle vocals and electric guitars mostly engaged in ethereal exploration (but capable, at times, of generating speaker-rattling stormclouds, when the trio get into their more slow-burning Rallizes-ish moments) this should be right up the alley of any of you into such bands as Nagisa Ni Te, Doodles, Shizuka, Overhang Party, and Up-Tight.
For you proggy instro-metal freaks, last list we had the ultra Champsy Hematovore, this time 'round we've got Suzukiton: two guitarists, a bassist, a drummer, and no singer, all hailing from a metalloid stoner robot shitkicker planet called Richmond, Virginia. Their songs are kinda complex constructions of chunky bits that make me think of, not Legos, but whatever that other, more advanced toy construction set is meant for really smart kids who'll grow up to be engineers. These guys probably played with that when they were young, but then picked up guitars and grew long hair and beards and instead of becoming engineers and making big hydroelectric dams and rocket ships and super-computers and stuff they grew up to shred metallically and mathematically (but groovily too) in Suzukitron. Heck, the square root symbol is actually used in one of their song titles. And another song is called "Chugga". I guess when you're instrumental, the best two options are song titles like that that describe the music, or song titles that just make somebody grin. Anyway Suzukiton chugs along nicely thick and sometimes speedily, and should definitely appeal to fans of the likes of the aforementioned Champs, as well as Zebulon Pike and Mastodon and some old faves from nearby to Suzukiton's neck of the woods, Breadwinner and Confessor.
It's definitely way better that these guys channelled their aggression and smarts into this rather than, say, making bombs. And keeping it instrumental means that they don't have to talk about their feelings, either.
Ok. This is potentially the BEST THING WE'VE EVER SEEN. Seriously.
If that isn't enough, we'll explain a little more. Jon Mikl Thor (aka THOR) is a Canadian body building champ and hunky metal cult icon from the '70s and '80s who got his start doing flashy, stunt-driven, super-human strong man performances (plus singing). These stunts include the bending of a steel bar with sheer muscle-power, then the blowing up a hot-water bottle with sheer lung-power. These became trademark moves as his metal-fantasy concerts progressed. Thor has described his high-concept shows as being based on Norse mythology where Thor (god of thunder and lightning) fights epic battles with monsters and evil warlords. We've seen him perform in person (in recent years) and it is actually kinda like that. As this DVD also proves. And on the DVD, he actually looks like "Thor" with long blonde hair and all, not someone's beefy dad, as he does now.
Thor's AN-THOR-LOGY contains mezmerizing classic performance footage from 1976 through 1985, including a special appearance on the Merv Griffin Show (!) and several rare music videos. As an old flyer states, "BODY, ROCK, SHOW, BAND". That about says it all. If I were Kathy McGinty watching this (see AQ list #213), I'd say "uuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuugghhh!" Basically, if you do not see this, you are totally missing out. Hilarious, kitschy, rock n' roll beefcake fun.
And, we urge you to catch Thor on tour this year. He's still darn brawny, and a master of tongue-in-cheek metal/fantasy/punk entertainment. Apparently these shows will find Thor on a quest "to find the magic lantern" as he promises not to disappoint his fans. SF locals, he's playing at the 12 Galaxies on August 31st w/ Slough Feg...and just might be showing up at AQ for some sort of meet-the-fans event!! ----* ----* In Stock, Not Yet Reviewed : ----* If you want to order one of these, just cut and paste the info into the comments area on the order form, or just email mailorder@aquariusrecords.org. AGORAPHOBIC NOSEBLEED "Bestial Machinery (discography vol. 1)" (Relapse) 2cd 14.98 ASSHOLE PARADE "Say Goodbye" (No Idea) cd 10.98 BIRDS, THE "Birds Birds Birds In The World" (Important) cd 14.98 BJORKK, HENRIK NORDVARGR "Vitagen" (Essence) cd 14.98 BLUT AUS NORD "Memoria Vetusta I" (Candlelight) cd 13.98 BLUT AUS NORD "Ultima Thulee" (Candlelight) cd 13.98 BONNIE "PRINCE" BILLY & MATT SWEENEY "I Gave You" (Drag City) cd ep 5.98 BORT, EDUARDO "s/t" (Fonomusic) cd 23.00 CLANDESTINE BLAZE "Deliverers Of Faith" (Northern Heritage) cd 14.98 COFFINS "Mortuary In Darkness" (Razorback) cd 14.98 CULPEPER'S ORCHARD "s/t +3" (Karma Music) cd 22.00 CULPEPER'S ORCHARD "Second Sight +6" (Karma Music) cd 22.00 DOUBLE LEOPARDS "Savage Summer Sun" (Stop It All) cd 12.98 DRAGUNS, GEORGE "Huffing Gas" ((self-released)) cd-r 9.98 EMIT "A Sword Of Death For The Prince" (Total Holocaust) cd 14.98 ETERNAL ELYSIUM "Searching Low & High" (DIW Phalanx) cd 24.00 EYEHATEGOD "Preaching The "End-Time" Message" (Emetic) cd 14.98 EYES AND ARMS OF SMOKE "A Religion of Broken Bones" lp 14.98 FALL, THE "The Complete Peel Sessions 1978-2004" (Sanctuary) 6cd 67.00 FAY, BILL "s/t" (Eclectic Discs) cd 21.00 FAY, BILL "Time of the Last Persecution" (Eclectic Discs) cd 21.00 FEAR MY THOUGHTS "Hell Sweet Hell" (Lifeforce) cd 13.98 FORENSICS "Hogback Mountain Sessions Vol.1" (Magic Bullet) cd 8.98 FRESH MAGGOTS "s/t" (Radioactive) cd 17.98 FRUIT BATS "Spelled In Bones" (Sub Pop) cd GINNUNGANAP "Remeindre (Latitudes)" (Southern) cd 11.98 GRUPA 220 "Slike" (Radioactive) cd 17.98 HELL, RICHARD "Spurts: The Richard Hell Story" (Rhino / Warner) cd 16.98 ICKY BOYFRIENDS "A Love Obscene" (Menlo Park) 2cd 15.98 IRON MAIDEN "The Essential Iron Maiden" (Sony) 2cd 21.00 KID 606 "Resilience" (Tigerbeat6) cd 14.98 KINSKI "Be Gentle With The Warm Turtle" (Intellectual Drunk) cd 13.98 KINSKI "SpaceLaunch For Frenchie" (Intellectual Drunk) cd 13.98 LESLIE, DESMOND "Music Of The Future" (Trunk) cd 17.98 MILK FROM CHELTENHAM "Triptych of Poisoners" (Alga Marghen) cd 17.98 NETO, JULIEN "Le Fumeur de Ciel" (Type) cd 16.98 ONDSKAPT "Dodens Evangelium" (Next Horizon) cd 14.98 PAINE, ANDREW & RICHARD YOUNGS "Mauve Dawn" (Fusetron) lp 14.98 PHOBOS "Tectonics" (Candlelight) cd 14.98 PUBLIC ENEMY "Power To The People And The Beats" (DefJam) cd 14.98 RILEY, TERRY & STEFANO SCODANIBBIO "Diamond Fiddle Language" (Wergo) cd 24.00 SHANKAR, ANANDA "And His Music" cd 24.00 SOILENT GREEN "Confrontation" (Relapse) cd 14.98 SON VOLT "Okemah And The Melody Of Riot" (Transmit Sound) dual cd/dvd 19.98 STRANGULATED BEATOFFS "Jacking Off With Jacko" (A Pop Records) 7" 6.98 TAKAHASHI, IKURO "Domoir To Sanshu" (Siwa) cd 14.98 THEE MORE SHALLOWS "More Deep Cuts" (Turn) cd 11.98 TIME FLYS, THE "Fly" (Birdman) cd 14.98 V/A "Blank Field" (Alien8 Recordings) cd 14.98 V/A "Mush Tour 2002" (Mush) dvd 17.98 VITALIC "OK Cowboy" (PIAS) cd 17.98 VOCOKESH "Through The Smoke" (Strange Attractors) cd 13.98 WOODEN WAND "Harem Of The Sundrum & The Witness Figg" (Soft Abuse) cd 14.98 ZORN, JOHN "Masada Rock featuring Rashanim" (Tzadik) cd 16.98 _______________________________________________________________________ ABOUT MAILORDER
Ah, Thuja, the mothership if you will of the Jewelled Antler armada. Featuring names that by now should be quite familiar to AQ customers: Loren Chasse, Steven R. Smith, Glenn Donaldson and Rob Reger.
Between them, these four are responsible for fifty records at least, under twenty or more different monickers. All of them great, and all of them loosely based in one way or another on nature, or natural sounds, or the way music and found sounds interact with the spaces they are performed in. There are instruments like guitars, drums, bass, but more often than not, you'll find sticks and stones, found objects, junk, all sorts of industrial and natural detritus, recorded, re-broadcast, and recorded again. Utilizing natural reverb, the sounds of certain spaces, ambient sounds as well as making the act of making music, music in itself. Wow. So what does Pine Cone Temples sound like?
It's wide open and expansive. Ambient perhaps, but there's too much going on for it to be strictly ambient. It's more a sort of abstract soundscape, the sort of soundscape the requires close listening, active listening, in order to understand, and feel the sounds, not just hear them. The rustle of leaves, crickets maybe, running water, or are those sounds manufactured by the band in an attempt to pay homage to the music of nature? Does it matter. Maybe its both, the sound of running water accompanied by Thuja emulating the sound of running water. Clicks and creaks, and little bits of clatter, a simple melody played on a recorder, warm organ warble, whipsering wind, toy xylophone notes released and left to drift in the slowly shifting breeze, distant bird calls, reverbed piano, dark cavernous rumbles, shimmering single notes stretched perilously across a sound field dotted with the echo of dripping water and the buzz of vibrating guitar strings. This isn't so much music as it is simply sound, sound that has been lovingly shaped and guided, observed and interacted with, recorded in its element. As if Thuja were just recordists, who use their own sounds to lure the sounds of nature to come just a little closer, in order to capture them raw and natural, and incorporate them into the sun dappled cloak of their jewelled nature-folk. The sounds of music can be smooth and soothing, or raw and primitive, as can the music of sound, and thus Thuja, whose music of sound is pure, and organic, lush and lustrous, and breathtakingly beautiful.
The bubblegum-y good times are sure hoppin' these days. Joining the pep rally already in progress by the Go! Team, are the seven-member musical bunch known as Tralala! Proving you can't judge a book by its cover, the fashion magazine-y posed photos of the band members in the cd booklet made us expect Brooklyn electro-clash or dance punk, rather than the unaffected, unabashedly youthful, energetic pop contained within. In fact, the super snappy electric guitars and girl-gang harmony vocals of this their self titled debut closely resemble those on The Rondelles' last album The Fox (a particular Cup fave)! Bound to keep the energy of early summer going strong into fall!
Anyone wanna play 'Name That Film" with your ol' Unkle James Lavelle? His latest release is somewhat vaguely titled Edit Music For A Film, and a little bit more helpfully subtitled Original Motion Picture Soundtrack Reconstruction. Maybe it should more appropriately be titled Edited Music From A Bunch Of Films 'cause what it featured is snippits of music and dialogue that Lavelle has nabbed from a lengthy list of movies and pieced together atop his deep bass and breakbeat meltdowns. The first disc has one single 54-minute track named "Widescreen Edit - A New Hope", while the second one is slightly longer at 58 minutes (but is also a single track) and is called "Bonus Material Edit - Strikes Back". Some clips are so fleeting that their origins barely register with the casual listener, while others are more complete and recognizable -- such as the seemingly unadulterated Sid Vicious rendition of "My Way" and the excerpts from George Lucas' early film THX-1138. He even uses two images from the latter film for one of the inner sleeves. The inclusion of the former is a bit distracting as it rudely jolts the listener out of the grooving Unkle-zone, and makes for more of a film music compilation feel. Not for everyone, but it might make a novel gift for your movie'n'breakbeat lovin' buddy.
This will most likely end up being the most essential, and due to its ultra limited status, soon to be most sought after, black metal artifact of 2005. Three discs, six bands, some you know, some you've never heard of, all completely killer. And unlike a normal compilation, each band on Crushing The Holy Trinity contributes 20-30 minutes of music instead of just a single five minute track. Three discs, titled appropriately enough, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, two bands to a disc. Most of you will probably need this just for the exclusive Deathspell Omega track, and rightfully so. A single 22 minute track (nearly as long as their recent full length!), epic and totally amazing, lots of moody post rock rhythms, grim black metal crush, and all sorts of damaged squiggly guitars, and unlikely riffs, strange arrangements and all the brilliantly un-black metal stuff that makes DSO's black metal so compelling. But the other five bands manage to hold their own, and then some! The other band on the Father disc with DSO is a band we had never heard of, Stabat Mater, whose lengthy single track is bleak and gorgeously depressive, a monstrous gutteral bellowing over a dreary melancholic doomscape, brutal blackened dooooom. Pretty darn good. Disc Son starts off with four tracks from Finnish BM outfit Musta Surma, another band new to us, who deliver buzzing blasts of harsh and brittle, true and grim sounding thrashy black metal. Then comes Clandestine Blaze, a band we are quite familar with, and who despite having never been reviewed on the AQ list, are one of our favortie BM outfits. Thick guitars, churning and crunchy, with minor key melodies atop them, a bit like Xasthur's Nocturnal Poisoning, all midtempo and hypnotic, with lots of strange ambient drones and creepy martial percussion. Really cool! The final disc, Holy Spirit, introduces us to two more bands we knew nothing about. First up, the curiously named Mgla, who definitely hit the spot for classic grim black metal, super buzzy and droney, very lo-fi, lots of thrashing rhythms and mosquito buzz riffage and demonic howls! The big surprise out of all these bands would definitely have to be Exordium, who completely kicked our asses tens seconds into their first song. Wow! Super white hot hyperdistorted buzz guitar, lightning fast blast beats, killer riffs, the whole thing blown out and recorded so hot the speakers can barely handle it!
The whole thing comes packaged in super nice, DVD sized cardboard sleeve, with a big booklet, two pages for each bands, with photos and liner notes.
SUPER LIMITED. We have a bunch of these in stock, and a bunch more on the way from Finland, but be prepared to be patient, and realize that we won't have these for long!!!
The Western obsession with India's prolific film industry, and even more so the musical numbers that drive the narratives forward, has nearly reached its saturation point. The amount of "best of Bollywood" anthologies released to date seems to almost equal India's annual theatrical output. Which all just makes it that much harder for us when we want to tell you that Indiavision is quite assuredly the best collection of Bollywood music we've come accross. See, so much has come before that such a claim will be immediately written off as so much of the usual record reviewer hyperbole. So just hear us out. First of all, what is it that makes Indian film music so great? Well, one of the things most often cited by fans is the over-the-top arrangements on some of the better numbers. The really great film music composers like Kalyanji & Anandji and Laxmikant & Pyarelal are some of the most worldly specialists in all genres of music, integrating the talents of Ennio Morricone's Western period, entire western orchestras, regional Indian classical music, the newest in electronic developments and whatever fad happened to be big in the year which they were composing (Hawaiian slide guitar, psychedelic music, soul, funk, you name it). The greatest film scores manage to somehow meld all that together in a way that just begs for some kind of clever culinary analogy (which we will spare you from in this review).
What else makes a great Bollywood song? The vocalist(s). A good song can survive without a male vocalist; they're only needed in duets with the female lead. The female vocalists in Indian film music are the equivalent of lead guitarists in the golden age of American rock and roll, and their vocal chords have the same dynamics, presence and range as most amplified guitars. Singers like Asha Bhosle (India's shining star of singers), featured heavily on this collection (and all collections) have a way of disembodying their voices from their bodies. When Bhosle sings her voice cuts through the speakers like a scalpel. Half of this phenomenon is due to her amazing lungs, the other to the insane engineering skills of the producers who record these scores who choose to overload the microphone preamps and super-saturate the magnetic tape during the loudest passages resulting in an unholy natural compression of the signal. Second only to the likes of Lee Perry in his Black Ark period of the early seventies or dub master King Tubby, the production values of Indian film music is singularly twisted in their techniques. Like the aforementioned Jamaican demigods of the multi-track, the recordists here have an arsenal of reverb, echo and compression tools that -- while not as new as the gear used in Hollywood's recording studios -- are used to their absolute functional limit. All of those essential elements of Indian film music are represented on each and every song here. But unlike many earlier collections, which focus their range on a particular era, composer, or vocalist, Indiavision draws from a wide range of sources. The tracks included here date from as far back as 1966 on up to 1984, it includes such film score heavyweights as father S.D. and son R.D. Burman, Laxmikant & Pyarelal, Kalyanji & Anandji and Bappi Lahiri. The broad time spanned by the tracks makes this collection as a whole more varied and easy on the ears. There's also quite a good variety of both slow, sultry numbers and completely batty comical ones. Some, like the title music for "The Burning Train" (listed as an instrumental), which features gruff female vocals like those of Yma Sumac, or the "Cabaret Dance Music" from the film "Dharmatma" with its maniacal laughter are completely off the wall. Others, like "Yashomati Maiya Se Bole Nandala" -- a deadly serious romantic number with crooned vocals by Lata Mangeshkar -- and "Come Closer" -- a mellow and sincere funk/soul song sung by Salma Agha -- are beautiful respites from the cornball antics which are more often the songs of choice for Bollywood anthologies. Comes with a 30 page, full color booklet with plentiful liner notes in both French and English. Highly recommended!
This is the record Weezer should have made. In fact this is the record Weezer should have made instead of every record after the blue album (okay, Pinkerton was pretty good). Which Side Are You On? is criminally Weezer like, which seems less criminal when you think about how un-Weezer like the last Weezer record was. This is massive hook filled pop, HUGE guitars, quiggly synth melodies, a dangerously Rivers Cuomo like voice. But so what? Weezer stopped giving us the sort of pop we wanted, nay NEEEDED, long ago, so what's a pop kid to do? From the first few seconds of the first track, you'll know you're in good hands. Hook after hook after hook, huge catchy choruses, killer riffs. This is power pop nirvana for sure! Track three also features a really funny out of nowhere hip hop breakdown, you heard us hip hop, that materializes out of some sugary sweet chorus, and just as quickly slips back in to the same chorus. Weird. It'll have you shaking your head and thinking, "Did I really just hear that?" Makes us think these guys are pretty funny as well as being killer pop songsmiths. As long as you can forgive the bad photo under the tray, white pants all around, hair gel, bare feet. Ugh. The cover art is amazing though, a full color robot surrounded by barely visible robots and samurais printed in back gloss on a matte black background!
Yes, we have to admit we've found his last few releases to be sorta hit-or-miss, love/hate, however with the amusingly titled Besterberg it's nothing but love love LOVE for Mr. Westerberg. Ah, that endearingly hoarse voice, those unmistakable guitar melodies -- it's like getting together with an old friend from your college days. Diehard fans will surely already have all of the older material compiled on this cd, and will probably have their own gripes over their personal fave tunes that might not have been included. Alas, such is always the case with best ofs, innit? However, amid the plentiful twenty career-spanning songs there's an added bonus to pique the interest of Westerberg's completists -- a trio of previously unreleased songs! "All That I Had", "C'mon, C'mon, C'mon" and an alternate mix of "Once Around The Weekend".
Record number two from Australian doom dirge juggernaut Whitehorse. And whaddaya know? It's another live record! But so what!?!? If they sound this heavy and this brutal live, why even bother going in the studio? In fact, we're sort of afraid of what might happen if these guys actually did make it into a studio. Not sure we could handle it! This is intense stuff. Massively heavy, so slow and plodding it's almost ambient, with huge stretches of near silence, while the crumbling remnants of the last riff drift earthward before the next riff comes crashing down. Shrieked inhuman screams, and plodding drum beats set at least a mile apart, moans and drifting guitars and cymbal sizzle drift like tendrils of black smoke between each Teutonic crush. Hell they even have a guy in the band credited with just "Rumblings." Fuck yeah! Think Khanate, Bunkur, Corrupted, Eyehategod. So so so good! Packaged in a beautifully printed oversized cardboard sleeve. And as always SUPER LIMITED!!!!
Wonderful! This group of community singers number just three and their names are David Grubbs (Gastr Del Sol, Bastro, Squirrelbait), Hannah Marcus and author Rick Moody. If you dig the down-homey country folk feel of Freakwater or Virginia Dare. Ms Hannah's voice is in full, sweetly lilting bloom and the fellows chime in every so often in warm welcoming fashion. Most of the songs are of the slower ballad kind such as the achingly lovely "Blue Daisy", but the trio also prove that they're not against kickin' up the dust a bit on more rollicking numbers such as "Fishnet Stockings". An ideal album for a picnic down by the creekside, or simply hangin' out on the porchswing one lazy Sunday evening.
The Red Krayola's Mayo Thompson on the cover (snazzy photo!). Inside, also: Marissa Nadler, Ikuro Takahasi, This Heat, Pierre Schaeffer, the Musique Actuelle festival, Carla Bozulich doin' the "Invisible Jukebox", and SF's The Skaters. Plus reviews and charts and letters and ads and all the usual stuff.
Fuck, first there was Celebrate Psi Phenemona, and then Pseudoarcana jumped into the fray, and now CMR is the latest label to start releasing super limited edition cd-r's from the New Zealand underground of improv free-noise, lo-fi drone scraping, and damaged sound art. Not to be confused with the Andrew Lloyd Webber associate of the same name, the Auckland based Nigel Wright focuses on loop-based systems which he transforms into miasmic drones. It's hard to say if those looping systems refer to feedbacking loops (which is possible as there is a cyclical sine-wave feel to many of Wright's sounds) or to a Terry Riley time-lag accumulation (which is also possible with all of the crystaline percolations that ripple through the dronescaping); regardless of the process, Wright's eponymous debut recording alternates between deadened electrical atmospherics and beautifully blissed out driftscapes. Fans of BJ Nilsen, Oren Ambarchi, and Jonathan Coleclough should take note! Limited to 100 copies only!
Xasthur is a one-man, home-recorded black metal outfit delving into the distortion-washed realm of Burzumic bliss, and is a favorite of both tUMULt's black metal master Leviathan *and* the Jewelled Antler/Thuja crew, so you know it's beautifully primitive and droney stuff, with majesty undying. The music is all shades of grey, like the packaging, with strains of melody obscured in mists of mostly mid-tempo metallic mayhem a la ancients like Darkthrone and Burzum, achieving, even at speed, a trance-inducing dirge quality. It's truly "A Walk Beyond Utter Blackness" in the "Forgotten Depths Of Nowhere", as per two of the song titles. If you like cultish black metal that verges on experimental drone (or vice versa), Xasthur should please you greatly, and offers more proof (along with Weakling and the aforementioned Leviathan) that even "sunny" California can produce black metal to rival that from Nordic climes. From the same label that just brought us that Lugubrum "De Totem" reissue we recommended recently, this has been a sleeper hit here at the store, and we're happy now to have enough in stock to give it a listing.
The guy behind Xasthur goes by the name Malefic, which leads to a little Andy Rooney question I've got: why do folks need to make up two names when one would do? why not call your band (ahem) Malefic? Although, his contact address is c/o "Scott" so we can see the need for at least one pseudonym in order to maintain the aura of grim darkness that his music deserves.
MPEG Download: "Soul Abduction Ceremony" [/audio/xasthursoul.mp3]
MPEG Stream: "Soul Abduction Ceremony" [/audio/xasthursoul.m3u]
On the new full-length from the Bay Area's Xiu Xiu, Jamie Stewart's warbly, throaty vocals inch-worm into your brain and ferment into soundscapes that are at turns grotesque and beautiful. Utilizes a variety of instruments -- including xylophones, glockenspiels, vibraphones, and acoustic guitars -- to create backdrops ranging from synth-pop to bad dream drone. La Foret makes us think of a child whispering a dirty secret and then stabbing his teddy bear. Self-consciously theatrical and unrelentingly unique. Music that makes you hold your head in your hands and question whether your pretty little world is really so pretty after all.
Whoah, man. A seriously trippy, dark and clangorous document here from the (very literally) cult group of early '70s rockers called Ya Ho Wha 13. Of all the many albums that the legendary Father Yod and his band of freaky communal-living hippies made back in the day (most but not all of 'em compiled into the massive Aquarius-beloved 13-disc God And Hair box set that came out in Japan some years back), it's always been THIS one that we at AQ (and pretty much every other reputable source too) have heralded as the absolute heaviest and best of the bunch. An essential item for anyone into far-out freeform '70s psych weirdness. And it's got an unbeatable title, eh? Penetration, An Aquarian Symphony. How can we not dig that? So we're quite stoked that the UK's Swordfish label has reissued it on cd for those who haven't got and/or aren't ready for the box set (which may or may not still be available anyway, inquire if you're curious). The four tracks here (including one entitled simply "Ya Ho Wha 13") venture from droneing spacey effects laden soundscapes with eerie Eastern-sounding vocal wailing to full-tilt throbbing, percussive tribal lift-off frenzies complete with stabs of heavy guitar distortion. Throw in some whistling to add an off-kilter spaghetti western soundtrack vibe and you've got Penetration. A damaged, dense, intense, quasi-religious psychedelic California-krautrock experience. Even the mellowest parts are still pretty edgy. This 1974 recording is definitely to be considered a cosmic precursor to everything from the drum circle discs of the Boredoms to the improv rock of Reynols to the neo-hippy clank of the No Neck Blues Band. Amazing. Just what you need before checking out the new DVD documentary on the Ya Ho Wha family that we also just got in (to be reviewed next time around, with luck).
